This recodes a numeric vector, character vector, or factor
according to fairly simple recode specifications that former Stata users
will appreciate. Yes, this is taken from John Fox's recode() unction in
his car package. I'm going with carrec() (i.e. shorthand for
car::recode(), phonetically here: "car-wreck") for this package, with
an additional shorthand of carr that does the same thing.
The goal here is to minimize the number of function clashes with
multiple packages that I use in my workflow. For example: car,
dplyr, and Hmisc all have recode() functions. I rely on
the car package just for this function, but it conflicts with some
other tidyverse functions that are vital to my workflow.
Arguments
- var
numeric vector, character vector, or factor
- recodes
character string of recode specifications: see below, but former Stata users will find this stuff familiar
- as_fac
return a factor; default is
TRUEifvaris a factor,FALSEotherwise- as_num
if
TRUE(which is the default) andas.factorisFALSE, the result will be coerced to a numeric if all values in the result are numeric. This should be what you want in 99% of applications for regression analysis.- levels
an optional argument specifying the order of the levels in the returned factor; the default is to use the sort order of the level names.
- ...
optional, only to make the shortcut (
carr()) work
Value
carrec() returns a vector, recoded to the specifications of the
user. carr() is a simple shortcut forcarrec().
Details
Recode specifications appear in a character string, separated by semicolons (see the examples below), of the form input=output. If an input value satisfies more than one specification, then the first (from left to right) applies. If no specification is satisfied, then the input value is carried over to the result. NA is allowed on input and output.
References
Fox, J. and Weisberg, S. (2019). An R Companion to Applied Regression, Third Edition, Sage.
Examples
x <- seq(1,10)
carrec(x,"0=0;1:2=1;3:5=2;6:10=3")
#> [1] 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3